Currently, customising class creation requires the use of a custom metaclass.
This custom metaclass then persists for the entire lifecycle of the class,
creating the potential for spurious metaclass conflicts.

This PEP proposes to instead support a wide range of customisation
scenarios through a new namespace parameter in the class header, and
a new __autodecorate__ hook in the class body.

The new mechanism should be easier to understand and use than
implementing a custom metaclass, and thus should provide a gentler
introduction to the full power Python's metaclass machinery.

This proposal has been withdrawn in favour of Martin Teichmann's proposal
in PEP 487, which achieves the same goals through a simpler, easier to use
__init_subclass__ hook that simply isn't invoked for the base class
that defines the hook.

For an already created class cls, the term "metaclass" has a clear
meaning: it is the value of type(cls).

During class creation, it has another meaning: it is also used to refer to
the metaclass hint that may be provided as part of the class definition.
While in many cases these two meanings end up referring to one and the same
object, there are two situations where that is not the case:

If the metaclass hint refers to an instance of type, then it is
considered as a candidate metaclass along with the metaclasses of all of
the parents of the class being defined. If a more appropriate metaclass is
found amongst the candidates, then it will be used instead of the one
given in the metaclass hint.

Otherwise, an explicit metaclass hint is assumed to be a factory function
and is called directly to create the class object. In this case, the final
metaclass will be determined by the factory function definition. In the
typical case (where the factory functions just calls type, or, in
Python 3.3 or later, types.new_class) the actual metaclass is then
determined based on the parent classes.

It is notable that only the actual metaclass is inherited - a factory
function used as a metaclass hook sees only the class currently being
defined, and is not invoked for any subclasses.

In Python 3, the metaclass hint is provided using the metaclass=Meta
keyword syntax in the class header. This allows the __prepare__ method
on the metaclass to be used to create the locals() namespace used during
execution of the class body (for example, specifying the use of
collections.OrderedDict instead of a regular dict).

In Python 2, there was no __prepare__ method (that API was added for
Python 3 by PEP 3115). Instead, a class body could set the __metaclass__
attribute, and the class creation process would extract that value from the
class namespace to use as the metaclass hint. There is published code[1] that
makes use of this feature.

Another new feature in Python 3 is the zero-argument form of the super()
builtin, introduced by PEP 3135. This feature uses an implicit __class__
reference to the class being defined to replace the "by name" references
required in Python 2. Just as code invoked during execution of a Python 2
metaclass could not call methods that referenced the class by name (as the
name had not yet been bound in the containing scope), similarly, Python 3
metaclasses cannot call methods that rely on the implicit __class__
reference (as it is not populated until after the metaclass has returned
control to the class creation machinery).

Finally, when a class uses a custom metaclass, it can pose additional
challenges to the use of multiple inheritance, as a new class cannot
inherit from parent classes with unrelated metaclasses. This means that
it is impossible to add a metaclass to an already published class: such
an addition is a backwards incompatible change due to the risk of metaclass
conflicts.

Can be added to an existing base class without a significant risk of
introducing backwards compatibility problems

Restores the ability for class namespaces to have some influence on the
class creation process (above and beyond populating the namespace itself),
but potentially without the full flexibility of the Python 2 style
__metaclass__ hook

One mechanism that can achieve this goal is to add a new implicit class
decoration hook, modelled directly on the existing explicit class
decorators, but defined in the class body or in a parent class, rather than
being part of the class definition header.

Specifically, it is proposed that class definitions be able to provide a
class initialisation hook as follows:

class Example:
def __autodecorate__(cls):
# This is invoked after the class is created, but before any
# explicit decorators are called
# The usual super() mechanisms are used to correctly support
# multiple inheritance. The class decorator style signature helps
# ensure that invoking the parent class is as simple as possible.
cls = super().__autodecorate__()
return cls

To simplify the cooperative multiple inheritance case, object will gain
a default implementation of the hook that returns the class unmodified:

class object:
def __autodecorate__(cls):
return cls

If a metaclass wishes to block implicit class decoration for some reason, it
must arrange for cls.__autodecorate__ to trigger AttributeError.

If present on the created object, this new hook will be called by the class
creation machinery after the __class__ reference has been initialised.
For types.new_class(), it will be called as the last step before
returning the created class object. __autodecorate__ is implicitly
converted to a class method when the class is created (prior to the hook
being invoked).

Note, that when __autodecorate__ is called, the name of the class is not
yet bound to the new class object. As a consequence, the two argument form
of super() cannot be used to call methods (e.g., super(Example, cls)
wouldn't work in the example above). However, the zero argument form of
super() works as expected, since the __class__ reference is already
initialised.

This general proposal is not a new idea (it was first suggested for
inclusion in the language definition more than 10 years ago[2], and a
similar mechanism has long been supported by Zope's ExtensionClass[3]),
but the situation has changed sufficiently in recent years that
the idea is worth reconsidering for inclusion as a native language feature.

In addition, the introduction of the metaclass __prepare__ method in PEP
3115 allows a further enhancement that was not possible in Python 2: this
PEP also proposes that type.__prepare__ be updated to accept a factory
function as a namespace keyword-only argument. If present, the value
provided as the namespace argument will be called without arguments
to create the result of type.__prepare__ instead of using a freshly
created dictionary instance. For example, the following will use
an ordered dictionary as the class namespace:

class OrderedExample(namespace=collections.OrderedDict):
def __autodecorate__(cls):
# cls.__dict__ is still a read-only proxy to the class namespace,
# but the underlying storage is an OrderedDict instance

Note

This PEP, along with the existing ability to use __prepare__ to share a
single namespace amongst multiple class objects, highlights a possible
issue with the attribute lookup caching: when the underlying mapping is
updated by other means, the attribute lookup cache is not invalidated
correctly (this is a key part of the reason class __dict__ attributes
produce a read-only view of the underlying storage).

Since the optimisation provided by that cache is highly desirable,
the use of a preexisting namespace as the class namespace may need to
be declared as officially unsupported (since the observed behaviour is
rather strange when the caches get out of sync).

Currently, to use a different type (such as collections.OrderedDict) for
a class namespace, or to use a pre-populated namespace, it is necessary to
write and use a custom metaclass. With this PEP, using a custom namespace
becomes as simple as specifying an appropriate factory function in the
class header.

Understanding Python's metaclasses requires a deep understanding of
the type system and the class construction process. This is legitimately
seen as challenging, due to the need to keep multiple moving parts (the code,
the metaclass hint, the actual metaclass, the class object, instances of the
class object) clearly distinct in your mind. Even when you know the rules,
it's still easy to make a mistake if you're not being extremely careful.
An earlier version of this PEP actually included such a mistake: it
stated "subclass of type" for a constraint that is actually "instance of
type".

Understanding the proposed implicit class decoration hook only requires
understanding decorators and ordinary method inheritance, which isn't
quite as daunting a task. The new hook provides a more gradual path
towards understanding all of the phases involved in the class definition
process.

One of the big issues that makes library authors reluctant to use metaclasses
(even when they would be appropriate) is the risk of metaclass conflicts.
These occur whenever two unrelated metaclasses are used by the desired
parents of a class definition. This risk also makes it very difficult to
add a metaclass to a class that has previously been published without one.

By contrast, adding an __autodecorate__ method to an existing type poses
a similar level of risk to adding an __init__ method: technically, there
is a risk of breaking poorly implemented subclasses, but when that occurs,
it is recognised as a bug in the subclass rather than the library author
breaching backwards compatibility guarantees. In fact, due to the constrained
signature of __autodecorate__, the risk in this case is actually even
lower than in the case of __init__.

Unlike code that runs as part of the metaclass, code that runs as part of
the new hook will be able to freely invoke class methods that rely on the
implicit __class__ reference introduced by PEP 3135, including methods
that use the zero argument form of super().

For use cases that don't involve completely replacing the defined class,
Python 2 code that dynamically set __metaclass__ can now dynamically
set __autodecorate__ instead. For more advanced use cases, introduction of
an explicit metaclass (possibly made available as a required base class) will
still be necessary in order to support Python 3.

As an implicit decorator, __autodecorate__ is able to relatively easily
replace the defined class with a different kind of object. Technically
custom metaclasses and even __new__ methods can already do this
implicitly, but the decorator model makes such code much easier to understand
and implement.

Unlike the new __autodecorate__ hook the proposed namespace keyword
argument is not automatically inherited by subclasses. Given the way this
proposal is currently written , the only way to get a special namespace used
consistently in subclasses is still to write a custom metaclass with a
suitable __prepare__ implementation.

Changing the custom namespace factory to also be inherited would
significantly increase the complexity of this proposal, and introduce a
number of the same potential base class conflict issues as arise with the
use of custom metaclasses.

Eric Snow has put forward a
separate proposal
to instead make the execution namespace for class bodies an ordered dictionary
by default, and capture the class attribute definition order for future
reference as an attribute (e.g. __definition_order__) on the class object.

Eric's suggested approach may be a better choice for a new default behaviour
for type that combines well with the proposed __autodecorate__ hook,
leaving the more complex configurable namespace factory idea to a custom
metaclass like the one shown below.

The new namespace keyword in the class header enables a number of
interesting options for controlling the way a class is initialised,
including some aspects of the object models of both Javascript and Ruby.

All of the examples below are actually possible today through the use of a
custom metaclass:

The advantage of implementing the new keyword directly in
type.__prepare__ is that the only persistent effect is then
the change in the underlying storage of the class attributes. The metaclass
of the class remains unchanged, eliminating many of the drawbacks
typically associated with these kinds of customisations.

Calling the new hook automatically from type.__init__, would achieve most
of the goals of this PEP. However, using that approach would mean that
__autodecorate__ implementations would be unable to call any methods that
relied on the __class__ reference (or used the zero-argument form of
super()), and could not make use of those features themselves.

The current design instead ensures that the implicit decorator hook is able
to do anything an explicit decorator can do by running it after the initial
class creation is already complete.

Earlier versions of the PEP used the name __init_class__ for the name
of the new hook. There were three significant problems with this name:

it was hard to remember if the correct spelling was __init_class__ or
__class_init__

the use of "init" in the name suggested the signature should match that
of type.__init__, which is not the case

the use of "init" in the name suggested the method would be run as part
of initial class object creation, which is not the case

The new name __autodecorate__ was chosen to make it clear that the new
initialisation hook is most usefully thought of as an implicitly invoked
class decorator, rather than as being like an __init__ method.

Originally, this PEP required the explicit use of @classmethod on the
__autodecorate__ decorator. It was made implicit since there's no
sensible interpretation for leaving it out, and that case would need to be
detected anyway in order to give a useful error message.

This decision was reinforced after noticing that the user experience of
defining __prepare__ and forgetting the @classmethod method
decorator is singularly incomprehensible (particularly since PEP 3115
documents it as an ordinary method, and the current documentation doesn't
explicitly say anything one way or the other).

While it accepts the class to be instantiated as the first argument,
__new__ is actually implicitly treated as a static method rather than
as a class method. This allows it to be readily extracted from its
defining class and called directly on a subclass, rather than being
coupled to the class object it is retrieved from.

Such behaviour initially appears to be potentially useful for the
new __autodecorate__ hook, as it would allow __autodecorate__
methods to readily be used as explicit decorators on other classes.

However, that apparent support would be an illusion as it would only work
correctly if invoked on a subclass, in which case the method can just as
readily be retrieved from the subclass and called that way. Unlike
__new__, there's no issue with potentially changing method signatures at
different points in the inheritance chain.

At one point, this PEP proposed that the class namespace be passed
directly as a keyword argument, rather than passing a factory function.
However, this encourages an unsupported behaviour (that is, passing the
same namespace to multiple classes, or retaining direct write access
to a mapping used as a class namespace), so the API was switched to
the factory function version.

A reference implementation for __autodecorate__ has been posted to the
issue tracker[4]. It uses the original __init_class__ naming. does not yet
allow the implicit decorator to replace the class with a different object and
does not implement the suggested namespace parameter for
type.__prepare__.